


Don't Leave Me

by WhumpTown



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Brightwell, F/M, Good Parent Gil Arroyo, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Parental Gil Arroyo, Protective Dani Powell, Protective Gil Arroyo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: Malcolm Gets RescuedWhump and Brightwell
Relationships: Dani Powell & Edrisa Tanaka, Dani Powell & JT Tarmel, Gil Arroyo & Dani Powell, Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo, Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright & Edrisa Tanaka, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 160





	Don't Leave Me

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted whump and Brightwell... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> That's all the explanation I got

“We have him.”

Her blood runs cold, her back rigid. 

“He’s safe.”

Safe, Dani decides, is subjective. “Where is he?” Her pounding heart is chipping away at her ribs, her fingers are trembling with fear. Her brain is full of it: fear. For too long, she’s known fear. Nothing but fear. Happiness in the moment falls away and leaves fear. Moments full of her nieces and nephew are swallowed by the fear for Malcolm. She is laughing with her niece on her hip, a glass of wine in her hand, and Malcolm is… Fear is all she has known for weeks and now he is safe and what will she do? Will the fear wear her down? Will it ever go away?

“The hospital downtown from the station,” Gil answers, drown momentarily out by the call system in the hospital. He mumbles something under his breath, a frustrated jab at the hospital because his emotions are high and it’s his own reprieve. “He’s… hanging on.”

Fear. What does that mean? Hanging on? Is his blood coating Gil’s hands? Will Gil force her to come down there and find his lifeless body where ‘hanging on’ should be? Subjective. All of it. “Gil…” her voice breaks and her hands tremble. Fear. It’s… exhilarating. 

“He’s awake,” Gil relents in that tone he uses when he’s exhausted. In that way that he doesn’t have the energy to deal, to press on with her being a hard-headed mess. So he relents. He doesn’t fight. “Asking for you,” he adds a moment later. He chuckles darkly and she can hear the tears in his voice. The strain a moment later, breaks her heart. “He’s hooked up-” his voice breaks, tears probably falling thickly. “He’s covered in wires, tubes everywhere, and he- he’s cracking jokes.” _Asking for you._ Her brain fills in.

Pain. The fear twists bitterly in her gut, pain. She feels longing and she misses him. “I’m on my way,” she decides, keeping the phone pinned between her shoulder and jaw. She slips on shoes, her jogging shoes right by the door. She’s wearing pajamas, clothes she wouldn’t ordinarily wear outside the apartment. Shorts a little too short to wear jogging around New York or at a gym. Malcolm’s t-shirt… one she had stolen so many nights ago that she doesn’t even know what month it was. 

None of that matters.

“Gil, don’t…” she feels guilty. _“-don’t let him fall asleep until I get there. Don’t let me miss him.”_ Her voice runs out and she hopes that Gil doesn’t fill in the blank. That he assumes something that isn’t what she was thinking. 

Mercifully, Gil fills in the blank incorrectly. “I won’t let him out of my sight,” he promises and she didn’t know she needed to hear that too. Relief. The pain is still there, the fear too, but relief. It’s soft and faint but God it feels so good.

“Good.”

The car ride is silent, as it always is now. Malcolm won’t reach across the space between them and turn the radio on. He won’t form a smile of pure joy and whistle to whatever tune plays out loud. 

Except, he will… soon. He’ll make her laugh until her belly aches. Dance across the floor in their socks and underwear. Sing in the shower, kissing and touching and loving… Malcolm. Malcolm is back. Alive.

She keeps her feelings buried. She can not tell Gil about Malcolm. How will Gil react to the knowledge of the things they have done. To the way that Malcolm makes Dani feel seen, understood. That he looks at her in a way that makes her feel like she has something worth seeing, worth understanding. That there is a distinction between the two. 

“You’re okay,” she breathes. Breathes like she hasn’t since he went missing. He doesn’t look like himself. Bone-tired but not from lack of sleep, no. It’s physical exhaustion, an inability to do anything besides sag limply into the pillows. To let the wires and tubes do their jobs. Let them swallow him whole. “You’re alive.” Tears, not one little sad tear creeping out of the corner of her eye. No, tears. Countless and numerous, sliding down her face as if a dam has broken. Perhaps one has.

She reaches out for him, her fingers ghosting over his gaunt cheeks. He smiles and leans into the touch she’s afraid to bestow. “Your hands are cold,” he whispers, eyes closed and a smile across his face. Tears of his own slip from his eyes and he puts his hand overtop hers. It’s a simple statement, one that holds such profound meaning. To only them. He says it again as if the touch of her hands is all he’s needed, yearned for. “They’re cold,” his tears morph into sobs and he holds her hands to his face. He holds her like he’s afraid he’ll lose her the way she lost him.

But he had lost her. So many times, he had lost her. His faith. His touchstone. He smiles now, tears pouring down his cheeks,” they’re cold!” He exclaims it as if her cold hands on his cheeks makes perfect sense as if it is the sum of the whole of life. His life. And, perhaps, it really is.

She puts her head against his, her right hand drifting through his hair. She pulls him close, as close as she can. She presses a kiss to his temple, his flesh warm. He’s always so warm. She laughs, the feeling of his skin against hers and the wholeness she hadn’t felt in too long. “Don’t leave me,” she whispers, gripping the back of his hospital gown as if that will hold him down. Keep him here.   
With her.

His grip isn’t strong. He trembles in her arms, pressed against her because he needs the contact but because he can not hold himself up otherwise. He clings to her because he needs it. “I won’t,” he promises. His voice is hardly above a whisper but the gravity is unmeasurable. “Don’t leave _me_.”

She chuckles, squeezing him gently. She wants to say, “ _I’d follow you to the ends of the Earth. To death. Through life. I won’t leave. Not ever”._ Instead she says,” I love you.”

Tired, haggard eyes look up to her. She realizes she’s communicated all the things she wanted to say. Summed up all these feelings. He cries. It’s peculiar how his tears create those earlier feelings. The pain etched into the twist of his mouth. The longing deep in her gut to erase all his pain, all his anger. The fear. Fear that she will let him down. 

His tears are hot as they touch her palm. He looks up at her with so much love that it breaks her heart. “I can’t say it back,” he admits, laying his head against her. Holding her. “I’m… afraid.”

She glances at the door, around the room that only they occupy. To hell with it, she decides. So what if Gil comes in? She guides him over, holding his hand as she maneuvers her way up onto the bed. Tubes and wires press into her side, the I.V. feeding into his hand cold and odd. His flesh, what she can feel of it, is numbing. Bliss. 

“Let me hold you,” she whispers, pressing her lips to his. “So you can feel.” So she can feel. His heartbeat as the machine above them measures it out. The warmth of his skin. His chest moving as his lungs exhale and inhale air.

Gil comes in a few moments later, the site of the two of them intertwined allowing his body and mind ease. Malcolm’s headrest on Dani’s chest, his fingers caught in a tangle with hers. Their legs a mass of limbs under the blanket they’ve wiggled under. Alive. Happy. “Shh,” he warns JT and Edrisa as they step in behind him. Both of them falling silent and smiles of their own breaking apart their faces.

“Lying shits,” JT whispers, shaking his head fondly. He isn’t mad. He’s… happy. He’s happy that Dani lied, that Malcolm deceived him. That those stupid heart eyes and bumping shoulders had meant something. 

Edrisa sighs happily, looking up at Gil with a content smile. She shakes her head,” aren’t they just the cutest?” 

JT ‘humphs’ at that, clearly going to stick with his faux ‘bothered’ approach. “They’re something alright.” A mess… an adorable mess that he loves. Disgustingly enough.

“Let them sleep,” Gil whispers, ushering the other two out of the room. He cast Dani and Malcolm one last look, a fond smile of his own. He can remember love like that with Jackie. He turns the lights out, smiling at the sound of Malcolm shifting in his sleep and Dani shushing him in her sleep. He hopes their love is long, that it trials through the twist and turns of life. Through them. 

More than anything he hopes they grow old together. The way he and Jackie once planned to. He prays that neither knows the pain, the defeat, or loneliness that is life without the person you love most. As he shuts the door, he promises them that he will fight with his very last breathe to make sure they never feel that pain.


End file.
